Now for a look at a Sanrio film with quite the interesting story.
In the dark ages of animation, Disney weren't pulling the numbers they used to, animation was still expensive and the 70s were ruled by the TV cartoons by Hanna Barbara who could pump out more than what Disney could do on one film. Seeing a gap in the market, Sanrio decided to have a crack at it by making a Fantasia style movie based on old Greek stories from Metamorphosis titled Metamorphosis but instead of classical music the film would use contemporary rock music of the era.
But upon it's release, the film bombed so badly that it was never seen again, so the film got recut with a different soundtrack now using disco music along with narration from Peter Ustinov (Prince John from Disney's Robin Hood). The name of the film became Winds of Change. The five stories are Actaeon, Orpheus and Eurydice, House of Envy, Perseus and finally Phaeton. The first three being Greek Tragedies, one being an action story, the final one being a cautionary tale. All the roles are covered by the same designed boy and girl with only the boy being named as Wondermaker outside his roles as other Greek figures. All the stories are narrated rather sarcastically at times by Ustinov and acts as the sole dialogue as it was intentionally meant to be a music only production. I can see why it didn't click with audiences as Greek Tragedies make up the bulk of the production and lacks much of Fantasia's artistic visuals and soundtrack. The Disco tracks are a little distracting as some songs have lyrics.
It was a worthy attempt from Sanrio but it's lack of diverse stories, unfitting soundtrack and characters being copy and paste into every story doesn't exactly shout the same standards as Fantasia with the only good part being Peter Ustinov's sarcastic narration; I'm fairly convinced he recorded it drunk. As a side note, the original cut has never been seen outside it's theatre premiere, it's unlikely it'll ever see the light of day as it's been well over 40 years now.
Final Verdict: The story behind the film is way more interesting than the film itself. It's nothing special and the only real novelty is the narration.
Winds of Change Review
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